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Show 114 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT validity of titles, passing upon the acreage included, and defining the boundaries was cumbersome, uncertain, slow and overlapping. The early Boards of Land Commissioners, limited as to the size of claims they could confirm, were soon displaced by new boards which were permitted to confirm larger grants. It was not uncommon for three successive boards to pass on claims. The earlier ones conformed more rigidly to their instructions, rejected a large proportion of the large grants, confirming some for only a small portion of the acreage claimed, while the later boards often either reversed the earlier rejection or awarded larger acreages. The letters of Frederick Bates and John B. C. Lucas reveal that those commissioners who looked critically into the documents were unpopular and rejected from local society. After the boards had made their decisions, the Commissioners of the General Land Office were expected to consider both the rejected and the confirmed claims and to pass on to Congress their recommendations for final action. The gap between the first decision of the board and the final action of Congress might extend to as long as 50 years, with patents not issued. Persons dissatisfied with the slowness with which claims were being decided might ask Congress to give their claims special consideration, and many did just this, but it was not easy to accomplish. When large interests were at stake it was perhaps advisable to take the matter out of the hands of the local boards. In any case, Congress, and especially the Committees of Private Land Claims, were frightfully troubled with cases that came back year after year. Yet, when the Bentons, the Slidells, the McDonoghs, and the Lisas importuned, Congress responded. Benton's favorite device was to rely on the recorder of land titles who would specifically investigate and record land titles and who thus aided in giving legal status to doubtful claims, for the recorder had little time to devote to testing titles, except when he sat as a member of the land commission. Yet, once the title had been recorded, it gave the claimant certain rights such as the right to collect rents and to eject delinquent tenants or opposing claimants, and a somewhat more favorable position in later stages of the adjudication. Claims which had undergone trial before the Boards of Land Commissioners one or more times, been passed upon by the Commissioner in Washington and by the Attorney General, had been considered by one or more Committees on Private Land Claims, might later under special or general legislation be taken to the Federal District Court for consideration and, on appeal, to the Supreme Court. In addition, numerous cases of conflict between two private claimants reached the Federal courts, cluttering up their dockets and absorbing much of the judges' time. Between 1830 and 1859 the Supreme Court decided 142 land claim cases, or an average of 4.7 a year, though in some years the total ran to 10, 16, and 26. Doubtless it refused to consider many others brought before it on appeal. By 1848 most members of Congress had gained much experience with private land claims, either in confirming claims approved by Boards of Commissioners, or through considering legislation to liberalize conditions for confirmation or private acts to allow individuals to test their claims in the courts after the time for doing so had expired or when they could not otherwise qualify. Other members such as David Yulee of Florida, John A. Rockwell of Connecticut, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Pierre Soule of Louisiana, Lewis Cass of Michigan, John McPherson Berrien of Georgia, Daniel Webster, and Thomas Hart Benton had represented claimants in the courts and some of them had received many times their congressional salary in fees. Webster earned in fees from his law cases, some of which were private land claims, many times his income as a member of Congress.88 88 Fletcher Webster (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Danid Webster (18 vols., Boston, 1903), XVII, 545. |